Topic: Clonehead’s Slotcars lighting up a 289 Cobra

[Clonehead]

  So I got this new hobby, the whole slot car thing, which has taken hold of my current passions. I have been having a lot of fun working on the track and have learned a lot about power and lighting along the way. During a period when I was working on model train stuff, I delved into lighting up moving cars and locomotives to more customize to my preferences. Tedious stuff those trains. After frying a couple of decoders and countless led lights, I started to get a handle for what not to do.
       Here is a Carrera 1/32 corvette stingray that has a factory digital chip but no lights as is customary with the newer release cars. This mold has been around for a while and seen a couple of releases as an evolution, “analog” car.
  I started out drilling out the painted taillights in the rear panel with a pin vise. I have a couple of options here how to illuminate and a couple of screw mounts in the way for easy fiber optics. I have an led array from another chip already wired I may try here.
  For the front fog/driving lights, I could run fiber optic line but would have to make room for he front wheels so I drilled the lights out and reamed out the back to give more room for a turn.

[Clonehead]

I needed more room for the front wheels where the fiber optic line penetrated the inside of the fender. The stuff is only so flexible. I can’t remember the gauge but my largest line was about perfect for my hole size and I had the idea that you could possibly heat and bend this stuff like pvc conduit on the jobsite and possibly it would still hold onto its total internal reflection which is how it contains so much light along its length.   
   Using a soldering iron, I made some custom bends to lead the fiber away from the inner wheel and up towards the upper firewall where I will light the two strands from a woodland scenics stick on orange led.
Third shot shows strands in place and covered with heat shrink tube. This is to contain the light to keep you from seeing it during its trip from led to fog light through the body of the car anywhere.

[Clonehead]

Sorry I’m so pic heavy. I need to hurry and dump them before the cloud holds them hostage on me again.
Here is the stick on led with a larger ldiameter piece of shrink tube glued to contain it and then the receiving pieces of wrapped fiber optic with their ends jammed up against the led face. I glued the ends of the larger shrink tube piece around the smaller ones to contain light again.
Last shot shows the rear fachia piece with the led boards superglued in place.

[Tamer]

Hey, thanks for sharing your tips. Lighting things up is great. I will follow this thread closely.

Time to take it to the front pages.

[Clonehead]

But you will miss the good pics
Got logged out during my post and lost it.
Here are the last three shots

[Tamer]

Well time to go back to the front page then.

Great stuff Clint.

[hemble]

Mate I'm loving the pics of the slot cars and track and love to see more.

Ron

[Clonehead]

Sorry I’m late, Ron. I went back to work after having a couple of months off and after the first full week, I’m trying to remember where the time went. I have scedualed some revisions to the track itself and have already changed the middle run to make it smoother but more on that later.
   I threw a chip in this older analog nascar chassis yesterday that was produced way back in 2003. These older models weren’t designed to accommodate this chip so a bit of dremel work was required to fit it within the frame where I wanted it so that the polarity switch and led light on the bottom side of the chip would be close enough to be accessible and effective. I kind of made a mess with those holes but they will work as placed. Couldn’t find a hot glue stick so I carefully superglued the chip down into place.
   The switch lets you reverse the cars polarity to run the cars in the opposite direction on the track. The led interacts with the various track section sensors. Lane switch sections,pit lane,lap counting/start/finish,intermediate times, if you have one of those pieces.

That switch in my palm was the polarity switch that this analog model had wired in between the track power and the motor. I wired and soldered my chip in between and decided to give this model a little tailight action. Those light chip board pieces are factory and came out of another car like this chip. They have their own wiring harness and built in resistance for the LED
Here, I have carefully superglued them in a good location on the chassis to light what comes next
. I really think hot glue would be safer for these circuit boards.

[Clonehead]

At a train shop, I found this plastruct 3/32 fluorescent rod that I thought could work like fiber optic and transfer the light from the led mount to the outside end but still be taillight lens color and possibly allow using white lights as they would come out red on the outside end.
     This old nascar wasn’t fitted with lights like it’s 1/1 counterpart but had some back up light housings molded into the rear bumper that were just the right diameter to accept this rod.
      With all the lights around the track, night driving makes the taillights nice to see, plus they offer more than one indication to monitor. When the car is applying the brakes, pace car function,fuel low/full tank”I believe” and programming cues. 
  I may revisit and work a fog light mount for the front. The harness is there for two seperate lights because sometimes the indication is the fronts flashing back and forth in sequence.
These rods are cut to end just short if the led chips on the frame. I didn’t try to contain any escaping light this time.

[Clonehead]

I skipped the part about drilling out the bumper holes for the rod.
I plan to revisit the stingray using this rod in a similar way.
The one shot is from the top showing the rod ends lining up in front of the led chips. I still think I could of used white but these are red.
I did get it successfully tested and running last night but had the motor wired backwards and had to switch that around.
  The taillights work magnificently but I forgot to take a shot.
Here was the car before I butchered on it.
Ok, quick shot

[Tamer]

Man that looks sweet Clint.

Off to share the update on the front page.

[hemble]

Great work Clint.

Ron

[Starchaser]

Wow, that Stingray turned out gorgeously! Excellent work.

[Darth More]

I agree, your cars look brilliant like that! Thanks for sharing the how-to!

- Philipp

[Clonehead]

Thanks guys
Time is short and the second stingray is ready to solder up and put back together. Tested and working, this time, I used two seperate orange tower leds for the front with fiber optic fed from each as before. For the tail lights, I chose two small leds and glued them into a position I thought would illuminate the rod we used in the super bird. I found that if I removed the silver bezel piece, the remaining holes fit the rod perfectly. I’ll install the rod pieces last.
  The tower led fog lights will be brighter than before and are now on two channels so the lights can flash back and forth during programming, pace car function, and low fuel indicators